


some princes don't become kings

by noctiphany



Category: DCU (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Prince Damian Wayne, Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21511465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctiphany/pseuds/noctiphany
Summary: When the palace is attacked in the dead of night, Damian honors his mother's dying wish and flees the only home he's ever known, so that an Al Ghul may one day rule again.He doesn't get far.
Relationships: eventual Slade Wilson/Damian Wayne
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	some princes don't become kings

Damian wakes in the middle of the night to loud noises outside the palace walls, shouting and...screaming. He reaches first for the dagger that rests, always, beneath the pillow he sleeps on, then for the sword that hangs above his bed. 

“Marcus!” He shouts for the man assigned to guard his quarters, not because he requires his assistance, only because he needs to know what is happening, who is attacking them. “Marcus, answer me! Who attacks us?”

But as feared, Marcus does not answer and Damian doesn’t waste more than a brief second grieving the loss of one of the oldest, most loyal soldiers of their kingdom. Instead, he quickly grabs his leathers and starts pulling them on. He grabs two more knives from the cabinet beside his bed, sheaths his sword, then pulls his cloak on over his armor. Judging from the amount of noise he hears outside, Damian estimates there may be up to fifty men, maybe even more, and it would be foolish to charge headlong into battle without even knowing what type of fighters they are. Ninja he could hold his own against. Soldiers in metal plate armor with broadswords could prove more dangerous. So instead of jumping right into the thick of it, Damian uses the skills he’s been taught since he could put one foot in front of the other. He blends into the shadows, weaving around corners, silent and unnoticed. He picks a few of them off when they get separated from the rest, slinks up behind them like the serpent etched into his cloak in gold thread and drags the blade of his dagger across their throats, gloved hand covering their mouths before letting them fall to their knees. Quick, silent, and deadly. It’s the best tactical approach for someone of his size, his grandfather had taught him. One day he’ll grow into himself more, become broader and taller, then his fighting style will change. But for now, Damian is happy to dance in the shadows. 

Still, the palace is overrun with them and Damian cannot help but run into a larger group. He can’t quite tell what type of fighters they are, which would tell him more about _who_ they are, what house has declared themselves an enemy of the House of Al Ghul. Their armor is not like anything he has seen, really, a mixture of chain mail and leathers, all in dark colors. They move and fight like assassins, but they look more like average mercenaries. Which would normally prove no match for their own army, but there are dozens and dozens of them spilling into the palace by the minute. Damian tucks and rolls out of the way as one of them lunges at him with a knife, uses his small frame to hamstring the man with his own blade, then shove his sword through his gut. More approach, but Damian deals with them quickly and efficiently, using his agility as his strength, rolling and flipping, employing every second of training Grandfather and his League of Assassins has taught him over the years. When he’s finished, there is a pile of bodies lying in a puddle of blood. 

He moves on.

Damian follows the screams. He saves a servant girl from one of them men by tossing a throwing star and hitting him in the jugular, then tells her to run and hide before continuing to make his way through the palace. He rushes towards the screams as he hears them, saving as many civilians as he can, until someone catches him by the hood of his cloak and yanks on it, slamming him against the palace wall. Damian’s hand drops to his side, draws his dagger, and he has it pressed against her throat before he realizes it’s his mother’s face staring back at him. 

“Quickly,” she says, dragging Damian through an alcove and even though he can hear more screaming in the distance, he follows her. She’s still in her bedclothes which are torn, and there’s blood dripping from a gash on her head, covering her hands. 

“Mother,” Damian says. “Are you --”

“We don’t have time,” Talia says. “Listen to me, Damian. Grandfather is dead.” Damian gasps, the air forced out of his lungs as if he’d taken a mace to the sternum. “You remember what we talked about. If you want to live, if you ever want to sit on this throne one day, you need to do exactly what we discussed.” 

“Mother, _no._ I won’t just leave you here. Our people --”

“No, Damian!” Talia shouts, hysterically grabbing at him and forcing him to the back wall of his chambers. “You must go!”

“Take your hands off of me,” Damian stands his ground, shoving her back, but then she begins to weep and for a moment, Damian forgets the kingdom he is destined to rule is under attack by enemy soldiers, that they could burst through the door at any given moment and slaughter them both. His mother is crying and it's such a startling reaction that it takes Damian a moment to realize -- she's afraid. He's never seen his mother afraid before. “Mother?”

“ _D_ _amian, please,_ ” she pleads with him, tears staining her cheeks. “One day the Al Ghul’s will rule again, but only if you _go._ ”

The noise from outside gets closer and Damian panics, waiting for men to come through the doors. Instead, his mother shoves him through a hidden passageway and barricades it so he cannot get back through. 

Damian stands with his hand pressed against the stone as he hears the soldiers barge into his quarters. Then covers his ears as his mother begins to scream.

: : :

Damian grabs the rucksack from the alcove his mother had shown him months before. _Just in case,_ she had said. Damian hadn't believed at the time that he would ever have need of such a thing. Now, he stands in the middle of the dark corridor and quickly sheds his bedclothes, changing into peasant's clothing. He cuts his long hair with his dagger until it is short and jagged, unkempt, unfit for a prince. He removes the rings from his fingers one by one, hides them behind a loose stone in the wall. Last, he removes the amulet around his neck, the one that has been passed down in his family for centuries. His grandfather had given it to him on his name day just this year and Damian has not taken it off once aside from bathing. It stands for courage and bravery in the face of one’s enemy, for the will to do what is necessary to protect their kingdom. The stone is a beautiful, sparkling emerald encased in thin, wiry gold and when Damian removes it, for the first time in his life, he feels afraid. The kingdom he grew up in, the kingdom he is meant to rule when he comes of age, is crumbling around him. His grandfather dead. His mother as well, he assumes, because he does not want to imagine the alternative reasons for her piercing screams. 

_One day the Al Ghul’s will rule again._ He is the only one who remains. It is up to him to honor his mother’s dying words. So, Damian follows the plan they had spoken of months ago. He changes his appearance so that he will fit in with the commoners. He is to take paths instead of roads more traveled, stay away from patrols, and make his way toward a small village thirty miles out. His mother has a friend there. _Antonio will take you in. He owes our family a great debt._ This is his plan. This is how he can honor his mother and his family name. This is the only thing he can do now, so this is what he will do. 

Damian makes his way quickly through the passage hidden deep within the palace, then crawls through the small passageway that takes him right outside the palace walls. Then he slings the rucksack over his shoulder, eyeing the wooded area in the distance. His plan is to hide there until the coast is clear for him to move on. He looks around, takes a step into the open, and something hits him in the back of his thigh. It's sharp. A dart, possibly an arrow 

_No._

_No._

_No!_

Damian’s vision goes blurry, the trees in front of him blending into one another. Then, as he tumbles to the ground, the whole world goes dark. 

: : :

_Pretty little thing, ain't he?_

_Looks like a little kid, must be startin ‘em younger these days._

_Think he’d, yknow, even know what he was doing down there?_

_Heh, I think I could teach him real quick like._

_Alright, you horny bastards, shove off and stop gawking. Don’t you got jobs to tend to?_

_Sorry, Capn._

_Too bad we don’t get to sell him, though._

_Yeah. That mouth'd fetch a pretty penny._

Damian can hear the voices vaguely, as if he's underwater. They’re muffled, far off sounding, but it takes too much energy to try to make out what they’re saying, even more to try to remember it. It doesn’t matter anyway, his limbs are still heavy as stone, unwilling to move, and he is tired. He is so very tired. Damian knows there's probably a reason to stay awake, but try as he might, he can't come up with one. So, he sleeps. 

Again, his world goes dark.

: : :

He wakes sometime later, mouth dry as wool and limbs heavy, but not quite as heavy as they had felt before. He can move them, albeit slowly, but he lies still in case his captors are watching. First, he listens. He observes. They're on a boat of some kind, which explains his nausea. Damian has always hated boats; the sea in general, mostly. He was born in sand and stone and that's where he belongs. He listens for voices, makes out two or three in close vicinity. He has no idea what he'll do on a ship, has no idea where he is, but he will not lie here and be someone's _prisoner._ He is an Al Ghul. He will never be chained. 

Quickly, but slow enough that he doesn't make himself sick from the vertigo of the ship rocking back and forth and the drugs still in his system, Damian moves around the room, clinging to the shadows. He peers out a small window, surveying his surroundings. Three men stand outside his quarters, smoking cigars. They're talking the way men do, of women and ale and the kind of nonsense Damian has never had time for, nor cared to. He can strike now, take all three of them out while they're relaxed and unguarded. He sees a sword on one of the men's hips that he can steal easily and he once he has that, he can make his way through the ship easily. If he clears the entire ship, he can persuade the captain to steer them back to land. The only things he needs to do is --

"Oh, look who's awake," Damian hears behind him, spins around to come face to face with a large, brute of a man wearing a toothy grin and a myriad of tattoos on his face. "Not time for that though, is it?" 

A prick to the back of his neck and the world tilts, blurs, until once more, the darkness takes him.

: : : 

The next time Damian wakes, it’s with a start, gasping for breath. He is lying in the dark somewhere, on a cold, stone floor. There are no windows save for the small one in the door that he assumes is locked from the outside. He attempts it anyway, his theory proven correct. At least, he thinks, he's on land again. Other than that, he has no idea.

Damian tamps down the impulse to scream. He can’t remember anything after exiting the castle. Every time he tries to recall the memories he achieves nothing but a headache in return. He doesn’t even know how many days its been or if it's merely been hours. He’s in the dark, literally and figuratively, and he feels like he’s going to go mad if he doesn’t figure _something_ out soon. 

Not much later, possibly fifteen or twenty minutes after he woke from the effects of what he assumes was a poison dart, the door opens. Dim candlelight from the corridor spills into the room, and then a man steps forward. Tall with grey hair and a mustache, his clothing not really telling Damian much about his station, or where he might be. He has a torch in his hand, which he sets in a sconce in the wall, lighting the entire room in an amber glow. Then another man enters behind him. He is shorter, stockier, toothier. On his side he carries a small axe. Damian is not scared. He has no weapons, no armor, no protection whatsoever from these strange men who have him imprisoned, both of them much larger than himself, but he is not afraid. He is an Al Ghul. He will fight until his knuckles are bloody and his muscles ache and his bones splinter. He will fight until his last dying breath for the house he was born into, for the blood that flows in his veins. 

“Tell me who you are this instant,” he demands, then quickly remembers he is meant to be playing the peasant, not the boy prince he once was. He has to remember this, change his tone and his inflection. He has to change who he is entirely, become someone new. Shed his old self like a second skin. If he doesn't remember, this could all be for nothing. He could fail his mother. “I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, but if you're going to hold me prisoner I should at least get to know who my captor is.”

“Feisty, aren’t you?” the first man who entered says and follows it up with a laugh, though the laugh confuses Damian a bit. It doesn’t quite sound sinister, like there’s a double meaning behind it, but Damian knows there must be. “You may call me Wintergreen, and this charming young lad would be Grant.”

The man opens his mouth to say something else, but Grant interrupts him before he can. 

“I dunno, Wintergreen,” he says, wrinkling his nose as he looks down at Damian. “Are you sure they got the right one? Thought he’d be...prettier.” 

“Yes, well,” the man called Wintergreen shrugs him off, visibly irritated by the interruption. “I’m sure he cleans up just fine. Your father was promised a pet and I’m certain whomever made that promise does not want to find out what happens if they cheated him.”

The men keep talking, but Damian tunes them out. Or rather, the words on repeat in his head drown out theirs. 

A pet.

_A pet._

Damian’s stomach lurches. He barely contains the urge to retch in front of the two men. He suddenly, vaguely remembers the conversation that had been held sometime before. It could've been hours ago, it could've been days. It was on a boat, he thinks. 

_Too bad we don’t get to sell him, that mouth'd fetch a pretty penny._

Damian’s blood turns to ice in his veins. He had followed his mother’s plan. He’d cut his hair, left his jewels, his family amulet behind, left _everything_ that he knew, that belonged to him by blood and honor. And he had been _given away_ , like a common slave, one with no experience, no worth. Damian wonders hysterically if they had at least gotten something out of the trade. But no, that wasn’t even the worst part of it. He wasn't just to be a slave for the man they spoke of. Damian's intended purpose was to be his _pet_. 

In Nanda Parbat they preferred the term companion, but Damian had heard the word used when Lords and leaders from other lands visited. He had even seen these pets before, traveling along their masters. Behind them, of course, head bowed, hands clasped. Sometimes chained together by golden cuffs around their wrists. Each kingdom had their own customs and the pets from the North were far from the companions that were kept in the East. They barely wore anything at all, mostly translucent silks and jewels. The pets, his mother had explained when he was almost too young to understand, were a vehicle for their masters to show off their wealth. Everyone knew that the pet with the rarest silks and the most jewels adorning them belonged to the wealthiest rulers. It was just another way for powerful men to display that power, to parade it out in the open like a peacock. Damian had never had a taste for such things. He much preferred using his wit and his finely honed skill to impress his power among people, to show the people of his kingdom that he would be fit for ruling over them. 

But that is all behind him now. He has to remember that, has to scrub that boy from his mind and start anew. He’d been prepared for that, but still, this is not the person Damian thought he was going to have to become. Pretending to be a peasant had been hard enough for him to imagine, but this. Pretending that he had grown up in brothels and whore houses, being taught not how to read and hold a sword, but how to -- how to _pleasure_ people; it’s unimaginable. He is a quick learner, that has always been true, but Damian isn’t sure that this is something even he will be able to pull off.

Slowly, panic builds and rises within him. He cannot do this. He doesn’t know where he is, who these men are, who he’s going to be _given_ to. He cannot be someone’s _pet._ In his mind, Damian is already prepared to fight. He thinks he can take the two men in the room with him, but judging by the cool temperature of the room and the stone walls, he assumes that he’s in a castle of some sort, so he’d have to fight his way out and there’s no way for him to know how heavily guarded the place is. He has no qualms about going down fighting, has not been afraid of death since he was a child. The only thing holding him back from rushing the two men before him is going against the last words his mother breathed. He cannot sully her honor that way, nor will he leave the Al Ghul name forever in the dust. 

This is the only choice Damian sees in front of him. To survive, to carry out his family name so that one day an Al Ghul will rule again, this is who he has to become. For now, he tells himself. This is not permanent. _For now._

“It’s time to get you ready then,” Wintergreen says, giving him a small smile. Damian does not return the favor. "And before you go, might I ask what we shall call you?" 

Damian stares at him. This is it. He’s already made the decision, this is who he has to become. For his family, for their honor. But he's already given so much, left so much of himself behind, hidden behind stones that he may never be able to return to. He knows that he has to become someone else, but how will any of this be worth it if he loses himself entirely? He’s gathered from their conversations and the way they have been treating him that the men have no idea who he is. They seem to believe he is just a common slave. Perhaps it is due to his change in appearance, or perhaps it is just that he’s so far away from home that no one here would recognize him anyway. It's a terrifying thought, but it is also the reason that Damian is able to hold his head high, his chin up. They won’t take everything from him. They won’t.

“Damian,” he says. He can feel the ghost weight of the amulet with his family’s crest on it resting against his chest as he speaks. “My name is Damian.”

_And one day I will rule again._  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> As per usual, I have no idea what I'm doing. This idea came to me and will not leave me alone. I make no promises as to if this will ever makes sense or that I won't catch adhd brain again in three days and forget that it exists. Mostly, I just want to write a Captive Prince AU because Damian would be a very pretty pet. I have literally never written in this genre before and have no idea what I'm doing please oh god be nice to me. 
> 
> This chapter is gen, but you know me. That won't last for long. There will be porn, some of it of the dubious/nonconsensual variety typical to the nature of the AU. Tags will be updated, etc.


End file.
